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Monday, February 7, 2011

4.0.6 Review

MMO Champion is reporting that patch 4.0.6 will be released tomorrow. Since this patch was released piece by piece over a fairly long time I thought it might be a good idea to go through and remind everyone what is included. Both the gear list and the raid guide have been updated to take the new patch into account.

PvE Changes:

Total Eclipse:Benefit from mastery increased by approximately 33%. This buff sounds bigger then it is. In reality it's a modest DPS increase of 2.5%-3.5%, but it will change the way we gear and reforge because it moves Mastery Rating ahead of Crit Rating in terms of marginal value.

Wild Mushroom: Several changes were made to WM in this patch. It's now instant cast, the radius of detonation was increased, and the damage was increased by 30%. If you haven't been playing with WM already, you better start. It's going to be a big part of any AoE rotation we do, and there are several fights where it will be very nice.

Moonkin Form:Grants 15% damage reduction instead of increased armor, and shapeshifting in or out of this form now breaks roots. I much prefer a 15% damage reduction over the increased armor. Some of you may be a little confused by the shapeshifting section of the blue comment. In short, Blizzard took away the ability for all druids to break roots with shapeshifting, but gave it back to Moonkin and Restos.

Starfall:Will no longer strike targets that are not in combat and will now drop stars at a slightly faster rate. This is primarily a quality of life change that I approve of. I think most of us have been in a situation where we hit Starfall and pull a mob we didn't intend to, or saw our stars wasted on insignificant targets. This should make life a little easier during trash, and should increase our significant DPS during boss fights.

Glyphs:Glyph of Entangling Roots will now reduces the cast time of Entangling Roots by 0.2 seconds, rather than making it instant cast. Glyph of Wrath now increases damage done by Wrath by 10% and no longer requires Insect Swarm on the target. Neither of these changes are huge, but are worth remembering. I loved having GoER for 5mans because it made CCing so easy, but I can see how it could be a problem in PvP. The GoW change shouldn't mean a whole lot since Insect Swarm should have a near 100% uptime, but it should be a small DPS increase for the fights where you use GoW.

Fungal Growth:The duration has been increased to 20 seconds. In addition, it should now be much more responsive when detonating Wild Mushrooms. I wasn't real impressed with Fungal Growth when I played with it because I thought it was fairly short and didn't apply quick enough. This should fix both of those issues.

Shooting Stars:The buff duration has been increased to 12 seconds. A small quality of life change that's probably a bigger deal for PvP and leveling then it is for PvE. If you weren't getting a Starsurge off in 8 seconds you were likely doing something wrong.

Mana Cost Reductions: Moonfire, Sunfire, and Typhoon all had their mana costs cut in half. Obviously it's a positive change but in my experience probably isn't that significant.

Profession and Buff Changes:

Meta Gems:New Meta gem Burning Shadowspirit Diamond will increase Int by 54 as well as increase your Critical Strike damage by 3%. In addition to that, the meta requirement for all 3% crit damage gems has been changed to must have 3 red gems equipped. The Burning Shadowspirit Diamond will be BiS, but will likely be difficult to find right after the patch. I would have a Chaotic ready to use right away and pick up the Burning when it becomes a little more available.

Engineering:The Synapse Springs effect now lasts 10 seconds, down from 12. This reduces the effectiveness quite significantly. The average benefit of the Synapse Springs is now just 80 Int but in reality is likely different when you consider other factors.

Bracer Enchant:New bracer enchants are available, on of which will increase Intellect by 50. This is really a nerf to the leather working profession buff. This means Leatherworking now provides the user with 80 Int instead of the 100 or so that it did before.

Off-Hand Enchant:Superior Intellect now increases Intellect by 40, down from 100. It sucks but I'm not surprised. Giving a 100 Int enchant to the off hand slot was probably a bit overpowered, especially since Staffs didn't have a similar enchant. I still think MH/OH combo is the better way to go, but his nerf evens the playing field a little.

Tailoring: Nothing really changed with tailoring other then some tooltip fixes, but it is the new over budget profession buff. Lightweave Embrodery is providing around 105 Int due to a smaller then expected internal cooldown. I'm not suggesting that everyone should change to it because I bet it will be nerfed, but it is definately the best for now.

Alchemy:New Alchemist's Stones for Agility, Strength, and Intellect have been added. The new Int trinket isn't going to be BiS. It might not even be a good transition item since the Darkmoon Card and Stump of time are so easy to obtain, but I'm sure it can work into your plans some how depending on what your gear needs are.

PvP Changes:I should really call these non-PvE changes because many of the changes above are significant for PvP as well. These are a few changes that don't really impact PvE but will be significant to some of you.

CC Changes:Entangling Roots, Hibernate, & Nature’s Grasp now have a PvP duration of 8 seconds. I don't PvP much so I'm not sure what the significants of this is, but I think it standardize the CC a little bit across classes.

Set Bonus:The PvP Balance druid 4-piece set bonus effect has been increased to 20 Solar Energy and 13 Lunar Energy, up from 5 and 13. The effect will also now be more intelligent at choosing whether to give the druid Lunar or Solar Energy (it checks the Balance Power to determine which to give depending on which energy is higher at the time). Again, I'm not sure how significant this is, but I sounds like it should be a pretty big help.

27 comments:

The PvP changes (minus the removal of instant roots) for Moonkin are fantastic in my eyes. First, the mastery bonus is great for the rare pvp mastery stacking Moonkin like myself. That, with the PvP set bonus will keep me in eclipse even more than I already am. My trinkets boost me to over 12k sp when all procced, averaging about 9-10 over time so that damage is substantial (70k+ crits are normal for me in pvp on starsurge, 14k initial sunfire hits too).

The pvp durations for the ccs aren't a huge deal. This is a good one for us Moonkin.

Just wanted to give a shout out. I check your site 2-3 times a day for updates / gearing options and general math associated with playing the best class in the game. Thanks a lot for making a bad ass site that show not only up to date and relevant information but also accurate analysis of how to be AWESOME just like you!

You should set up a way to donate to "keep the site going" or a way to take "payment" for all of your hard work that you pass along to all of us in wow land. I has a mean fruit cake left over from X-Mas that I think you would love as a way to say thanks.

As a casual PvP player, and hardcore PvE player, The instant cast entangling roots was a favorite of mine, and often used, esp. when trying to disengage from an enemy as resto. With all of the classes increased speed abilities and snares, travel form has reduced effectiveness. I'm sad to see this change go.

Can you comment on the news that PvP item base stats will be cut? And I thought PvP set bonus for balance will give more eclipse energy? Still don't like this bonus at all, more energy when I get Crit?? Yeaa, I finally hit an eclipse state and I'm dead.

Additionally very interested in seeing if the new mushrooms are worth it. Placing 3 and having to detonate still seems very clumsy though. glyph of place 3 mushrooms at once in the works??? :)

PS: Easy to obtain darkmoon cards? Where are you playing, these are going for 35K on my server and a TON of herbs,milling etc. to get them. And you think this stump of time is better than the new alchemy stone? +351 int (with red gem) and +194haste? If anything at least you don't have to grind TB rep, although I already have.

About the reworked shooting star... its not only a small buff, but it also fixes small issues on raids where the proc had a very high chance of getting wasted (Wyrmbreaker, conclave of winds for example).

Thanks for the kind comments. I don't put up a Donate button, because I don't like the idea of people paying for my content. It's really just a hobby of mine and I don't pay anything to host the site. In the end, if I asked people to donate I would feel a greater obligation to post more frequently. I'm not planning on stopping anytime soon, but I don't want to feel like I'm letting anyone down if I go a little while without posting.

@Anon2

I think the Darkmoon Cards are relatively easy to get. Yes they can be expensive depending on your luck and what server your on, but it is BIS currently and you don't have to compete with anyone else for the drops. In fact, Mine paid for it self, because I sold my other cards that didn't fit the deck. Even if your not a scribe you can probably get a guildie to craft them for you.

Regarding the Stump of Time: If you need the hit Stump of Time and the new alchemist stone are reatively equal in value. The 351 Int and 194 haste on the stone are great, but 321 hit is also very good, and the proc is quite good as well. I verified my valuation with several WoL logs and Im satisfied with the results.

@Drunken BeardI forgot to update the gear list with the changes to crafted gear. I will have to go back and do that.

Personally I've become a little worried that we're going to see nerfs in the near future. After raiding last night, my overall dps through BoT on Halfus, T&V, and Ascendant Council was an easy 2.5k to 3k above the #2 spot.

I will grant that these fights are tailored towards moonkin strengths, being that there are 2+ targets to DoT during most of the fights, but the last time I saw my personal damage jump so far in front of everyone else was when they put the new talent trees in at the end of WotLK and moonkin started melting everything in sight. That was nerfed down by the next week, and I'm nervous the same will happen here.

Regarding the Starfalll change. Slightly faster fallling stars appears to mean twice as fast. After a little testing, a bit tricky since the new mechanic means it won't fall on testdummys at all, shows it todropp 20 stars on signle target situations and 40 stars with 2 or more targets. This doubles our damage from each starfall, compared to the old one.So this is a quite significent boost to our overall DPS.

I tried it out on a couple of occations in SCC and a few other raids, last night and didn't have any issues of it pulling extra packs. But I've read other repports from ppl that have had that happen as welll.Suprice! New machanics are buggy :)

Mastery in Arena is kinda wasteful as you very rarely enter solar/luna. You're better off with crit. Regular BG's is ok, but who cares. The good stuff comes from arena, and the Arena dagger is the best raid starter weapon until your well into raid progression. All the blues don't compare - not even close.

In arena pvp, boomkins can still be neutralized as we really don't have any decent defenses. I would much rather see Thorns re-buffed to it's original damage base. The roots change really sucks in arena, and natures grasp, although instant once you're hit, doesn't help against melee cause they can still hit you until you break whatever stuns they have on you and run away. By that time, they're untangled and still kicking your butt. I'd rather they take bigger damage against thorns until you can get back into a fighting position.

Shrooms - I luv the damage, but again, it is very limited in arena. It'd be nice if they worked more like Totems. Or even better, detonate when another player gets in range. Then you wouldn't have to worry about hitting the detonate button and just missing a pursuer. PVE, if your tank stays on the shrooms, is HUGE aoe- HUGE. I likey, but again, if your tank moves, or you don't hit the stupid detonate button in time, it's wasted.

I like the mana changes as I don't come close to having issues any longer in raids and can save innervate for the healers. Hope they don't change this.

Also hope they don't nurf any of the changes they recently made. Although I was near the top of the charts before the changes, I like being the top dog. Woof!

We think we overnerfed Balance. Some smart players have pointed out that Balance’s dps was inflated by a bug with Starfall that we have since fixed. With that in mind, we are changing the Moonfury nerf from 15% to 10% instead of 6%. This will be hotfixed soon™.

Hi Graylojust a little question. After Moonkin's changes (from armor-buff to damage-mitigation) do you think Perseverance remains a good talent to consider? Maybe it's better using 3 points in Fungal Growth, Gale Winds (and something else) or return to a classic Owlkin Frenzy. What do you think about?

@Thel: Fungal Growth is primarily a pvp talent, its pve usefulness is situational, and the effect can cause some confusion at least at first (then it just causes mockery =P ) Gale Winds is almost useless atm. Wild Mushroom and tab dotting do so much more damage than Hurricane, you might as well take that off your bars.Owlkin Frenzy on the other hand has a very high uptime compared to ICC from what I've seen. That's where my points went.